Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid crystal display apparatus comprising an electrode with a plurality of openings.
Description of the Background Art
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-252298 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 1) discloses a liquid crystal display apparatus wherein a plurality of openings (slits) is respectively provided to transparent electrodes disposed facing each other, sandwiching a liquid crystal layer. In this liquid crystal display apparatus, a fringe electric field (an oblique electric field) is generated in two different directions by an action of each opening, and applied to the liquid crystal layer, thereby causing a dual-domain alignment structure to be produced in the liquid crystal layer. As a result, viewing angle dependency is improved, making it possible to decrease the viewing angle dependency of the display region as a whole. Further, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2009-122271 (hereinafter referred to as Patent Document 2) discloses a liquid crystal display apparatus that improves display uniformity by making the spacing between openings adjacent in the longitudinal direction smaller than a width (length in a width direction) of each opening in a liquid crystal display apparatus such as described above.
However, during the manufacture of a liquid crystal display apparatus such as described above, a variance in etching accuracy when patterning the large number of openings can lead to a defect wherein a portion of openings join together in respective longitudinal directions, causing disconnection in the electrode. Possible solutions for this include decreasing the etching rate by changing the etching solution and settings such as the processing temperature. Nevertheless, a decrease in the etching rate decreases the production efficiency of the liquid crystal display apparatus, and is therefore not preferable.
On the other hand, if the longitudinal direction spacing between openings is set larger, it becomes easier to prevent the disconnection resulting from the openings joining together even if the etching rate is not decreased. As disclosed in Patent Document 2 described above, however, to improve the display uniformity of the liquid crystal display apparatus, the width of the openings must also be increased in association with setting the longitudinal direction spacing between openings larger. However, the effective aperture ratio of the display part of the liquid crystal display apparatus decreases in proportion to the increase in the width of the opening, making this corrective measure not preferable as well.
It is therefore an object of the specific aspects according to the present invention to provide a technique that prevents electrode disconnection in a liquid crystal display apparatus comprising a plurality of openings in an electrode.